Waverly glances at the clock on the wall. Her face reads like she’s trying to come up with an excuse, but she’s so flustered nothing’s coming together in time. “Yep. Leaving early.”

She’s gone.

Just like that.

I shovel the rest of my breakfast in my mouth and stand to leave, keeping my dirty dishes on the table because I don’t feel like being yelled at for not letting the women clean up after me.

House rules are house rules.

I grab my jacket and keys and run outside. Waverly’s sitting in her car, letting it warm up, and messing with her radio. I rap on her window, grinning as she jumps up in her seat.

She rolls her window down. “What?”

“So…” I’ve got a smile a mile wide. “You did it.”

She shifts her car into drive, and it lurches until she puts her foot on the break. She’s staring ahead now, opting not to make eye contact with me a second longer than she has to.

“You’re glowing.” I rest an elbow on the inside of her window.

“Stop.” She rolls her eyes.

“Stop what?”

“Gloating. You’re acting like you… like you made me… like you gave me the…” She can’t say it.

It’s probably not a word in her vocabulary, so I’ll say it for her. “Orgasm.”

Her face whips toward mine, freshly-washed, sandy hair spilling down her shoulders.

“You can say it, Waverly. Or-gas-m.” I smirk. “And I kind of did give it to you. I mean, not literally. You did all the work. I can’t take any credit for that.”

I glance up toward the main house to find Mark standing in the living room window, casting a hard stare our way. His mouth forms a hard line. I smack the top of Waverly’s car and tell her to get going, giving Mark a friendly wave and a thumb’s up. He doesn’t return anything other than a stone cold stare. If he asks later, and I’m sure he will, I was just checking on her. Making sure she was okay. Just being a good stepbrother.

It’s not a lie.

I do care about her, in my own little way. I think beneath her stuffy exterior and Miss Priss attitude, she’s a good person. I think we’d be friends if the conditions were favorable.

“See you in Chem,” I say as she pulls away.

***

I’m stopped outside my classroom by Claire Fahnlander.

“Jensen, hey.” She twirls her hair around her finger and leans against a red locker. “I know you’re new in town. I’m having some people over this weekend, like, for a senior party. My parents are going to be out of town, so I’ll have the whole place to myself. You should stop by. You know, if you’re bored or whatever.”

She bats her lashes. She’s the kind of girl who knows she’s pretty—the kind who skirts through life on her good looks and manipulative charm. She’s the type you could spend a drunk and rebellious teenage weekend with and not think twice about her again because underneath her fuck-me façade, there’s nothing at all.

I glance into the classroom to find Waverly watching. Her eyes veer away the second she’s caught.

Claire turns to see what I’m looking at and then rolls her eyes. “Ugh, Waverly Miller. Total wannabe.”

“Really?” I scratch the space above my brow. “She doesn’t seem like that to me. A little uptight, maybe. A little tightly wound.”

I can’t imagine Waverly wanting to have anything to do with Claire or her posse of mean girls. There’s a group of bitches like that in every school across North America.

“Trust me. She’s annoying.” Claire folds her arms. Her mouth twists into a devious grin. “Anyway, about this weekend, you should come by around—”

I don’t say another word. I simply walk away.

“Hey.” I pull out the chair next to Waverly, leaning in and nudging her arm. “What’s up?”

“I didn’t know we were friends now.” She flips her notebook open and clicks her pen, staring straight ahead at the dry erase board in the front of the class where Mrs. Davenport is writing and erasing something.

“Are you cool with what happened last night?” I whisper. I hold my breath, anticipating her answer. She’s clearly bent on making me wait.

Is she punishing me? If so, I did nothing wrong. I planted a seed. She chose to water it.

I snicker as she scribbles today’s date on the corner of her paper and throws her pen down. “Yes, Jensen. I’m fine.”

I don’t believe her.

The eight a.m. bell rings and Mrs. Davenport takes attendance. Claire Fahnlander watches us from the corner of her eye. I swear she’s plotting all the ways she thinks she’s going to make me hers.

She’s in for a world of disappointment if she thinks I view her as anything other than a piece of ass, and even then, I have no intention of fucking around with that. She’s probably been with half the school, or at least anyone with a football jersey and a half-smile.

“You’re different now,” I whisper to Waverly. She stares straight ahead at the white board.

“Can’t get anything past you, huh.” Her voice is hardly audible.

“So you did it. I know that much,” I cross my arms and sit back in the chair, not even attempting to fight the grin consuming my lips. I lean over to her, whispering into her ear, “But the biggest question is, were you thinking of me when you came?”

Waverly jolts and pushes her chair back, causing a metallic grinding noise to beckon all eyes our way. Mrs. Davenport stops yammering about reactants and holds her marker in the air. She scans the classroom and spins around, resuming her lecture with an air of annoyance in her tone.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching a girl squirm from the heat of my stare. She was a delicate flower when I met her a few days ago. Now she’s blossoming right before my eyes.

Quiz sheets are passed to us and the teacher rains silence upon the classroom and mutters something about an hour.

An hour to take a quiz? I flip the sheet over. It’s thirty questions. I hate when teachers give way too much time for these. She probably wants some quiet time so she can do a little online shopping or Facebook browsing during work time. No one needs a whole fucking hour to take a thirty-question quiz.

That’s an hour of sitting here with my quiz finished and being unable to breathe a single word to Waverly. As pleased as I am that she touched herself last night, I want to make sure she’s okay. I’m not a complete asshole.

She finishes her test after fifteen silent minutes and turns it in before coming back to her spot and pulling a book out from her bag. I squint to see what she’s reading. Jane Austen. How classy. Of course she wouldn’t read anything modern. I doubt Mark Miller allows his precious daughter to be exposed to modern-day romance and all its oversexed dialogue.

I turn my quiz in and take my sketchpad from my bag along with a carbon pencil. Observing my surroundings, I’m left with minimal options. I can either draw a picture of the radiator to my left, the back of Claire Fahnlander’s narrow head, or Waverly reading. I opt for the latter.

Leaning back in my seat, I rest my pad across my lap, making broad strokes and creating the outline of her book’s profile. Her hair spills down the side of her face, covering all but the silhouette of her pointy nose and her dark lashes that curl up at the ends. There isn’t a speck of makeup on her face, but she doesn’t need it. The fluorescent light isn’t ideal, and the shadows it casts on her aren’t the most flattering, but none of it matters. She’s still fucking stunning.

Ten minutes pass and I’m almost done with the outline. I begin shading, finding myself in the early stages of getting lost and forgetting where I am. I don’t feel like I’m sitting in Chem class drawing my tragically pure stepsister. My mind is blank as I grip the pencil. I use my fingertips to smudge certain areas just a little. My hands will be gray by the time I’m done, but I don’t care.

That’s the beauty of art—it transports me. It makes me forget. There aren’t a lot of things I can lose myself in, but this is one of them. When I draw, I’m not an arrogant bastard. I’m not Jensen Mackey, son of Josiah. I’m not a hundred shades of fucked up in the head.